Improving Officiating at FIRST Events

[Madison]

I wanted to take a moment to reiterate that I'm aware that all of the volunteers -- and the referees, particularly -- want to make the game as exciting and fair as possible. I am not concerned at all about specific situations that affected my team; we can't change the past and our disappointment was someone else's excitement and that's just fine by us. We all had fun.

I've had the chance to talk about some of my concerns with FIRST and with well-respected folks here on the forum and am satisfied that I've been heard. That's the best I can ask for and know that everyone's trying their best to make this week's regionals as good as they can be.

For my part, I promise that I'll be nicer in Tacoma than I was in Portland. I'm disappointed that I was so angry about the refereeing this weekend. I'm very fortunate for the opportunities that FIRST has given me and that it continues to give me -- I get to spend a lot of someone else's money doing something I love -- and I take the responsibility that comes with that very seriously. If my team and the robot we field are not the best that they can be, I'm disappointed in myself and that makes me upset.

Tonight, my team had dinner with 368 from Hawaii and showed them around our lab. It reminded me how nice so many of the people in FIRST are and that nobody on our team really cares about what happened this weekend. We did well, despite my frustrations, and the kids deserved every bit of congratulations that they received from everyone back home.

So, yeah -- thanks, everyone, for listening. I think that there're lots of things we can to keep making this program better and we should do all that we can to be a part of that. Maybe one day, I'll get to be a referee and then I'll stop abusing them quite so much -- or they'll all realize that I'm stubborn and blunt, but don't have a mean bone in my body.